To hell - and back

As the five Camp Delta detainees prepare to leave one nightmare, at home another awaits. But not only are their communities divided, their imprisonment has caused a serious rift between Britain and the US

When Shafiq Rasul arrived in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January 2002 he was in a desperate state. His weight had dropped to eight stone from a healthy 11 stone and he was described as 'lucky to be alive'. When he had recovered enough to realise where he was, this 24-year-old football fanatic from Tipton in the West Midlands probably wished he had died in the Afghanistan conflict in which friends and family say he had become accidentally embroiled after travelling to Pakistan for a computer course.

The first 110 men taken to the American airbase were kept at Camp X-Ray, a makeshift gulag of tiny cages open to the intense Caribbean sun and lacking all privacy. Early photographs from the camp showed the men in orange boiler suits shackled, blindfolded and huddled on their knees in their cages or transported around the camp on trolleys.

Rasul and his fellow 'enemy combatants' were later transferred to huts in Camp Delta, a purpose-built prison camp where conditions were less obviously barbaric but still nowhere near the levels of basic human comfort offered by even the harshest high-security prison in Britain. One report from a New York Times journalist who visited the camp last year suggested the conditions were based on the 'super-max' solitary confinement conditions designed for the most dangerous killers in the United States penal system.

Each man at Camp Delta is kept alone in a wire-mesh cell, 6ft 8in by 8ft and allowed out for 20 minutes' solitary exercise three times a week. The US makes no pretence that the camp is covered by the Geneva Conventions because the men are not designated as prisoners of war.

When the families of Rasul and his schoolfriend, Asif Iqbal, were told of their detention they immediately started proceedings for their release. They contacted Gareth Peirce, the human rights lawyer famous for exposing the miscarriages of justice in the cases of the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six, wrongly accused of being republican terrorists. By chance Shafiq's brother Habib had been studying Irish miscarriages of justice and knew Peirce was the right person to contact.

Legal experts now agree that it was their swift action that paved the way for the announcement last week that the pair would soon be freed. American justice moves slowly, and there is no fast track for suspected terrorists. But the persistence of the Rasul and Iqbal families and their legal team brought the issue to a head. A third friend from Tipton, Ruhal Ahmed, who told his family he was travelling to Pakistan for a wedding, can also be thankful, as he and two other detainees, Jamal al-Harith from Manchester and Tarek Derghoul from London, are also to be freed.

Back in Tipton there are no plans for a celebration. A support group has sprung up around the men, but members told The Observer that, as one nightmare ends for Rasul, Iqbal and Ahmed, another begins.

The Tipton three will return to another battleground. The town has become deeply divided over the men who have been labelled as terrorists. The British National Party has played on local fears of the Muslim community and gained two council seats in the town's local elections. Attacks on Muslims and bullying at schools have increased. The families of the men fear for their safety when they return.

Mushtaq Ahmed, who has led the 'Justice for Shafiq' campaign, which became the focus for moves to release the Tipton Three, said the news, though welcome, gave him a sense of anti-climax. ' I feel numb,' he said. 'What have we achieved? It is like someone physically stripping you of all your clothes, and then, when they give them back, expect you to say thank you.

'The question is why did this happen? Why were they paraded around like in the circus? Why were they not treated like human beings? And what happens now? There will be attention for a few weeks, maybe months, and then it will die down.'

Personal tragedy has also struck Shafiq Rasul while he has been away. When he returns to Tipton he will discover that three close members of family have died: his three-year-old nephew, his brother, of cancer, and just 10 days ago his brother-in-law, who had a heart attack. 'His mother's heart is broken,' said Ahmed. 'She went to the shops and people avoided her, instead of comforting her. Shafiq's brothers had to change jobs.'

Whatever their reasons for travelling to Afghanistan, the Tipton Three could never have imagined their actions would cause such a serious diplomatic rift between Britain and the United States.

When George Bush and Tony Blair stood side by side in the Locarno Suite at the Foreign Office last November, they had virtually nothing to say about the Guantanamo detainees. Protesters in boiler suits posed behind fake metal bars to highlight the plight of the men, but from the leaders' speeches no one would have known the issue was becoming a festering sore between the two countries.

Bush's state visit to London at the end of last year was the first of several 'near misses' on the road to the five Britons' release. Aware that the trip was likely to be marked by demonstrations against the US President, both sides had been negotiating furiously in the hope of being able to announce a deal on the Guantanamo nine which would ease Bush's ride in Britain - not necessarily releases, but the option of a fair trial in the US for the Britons rather than a closed military tribunal which would be unacceptable in the eyes of the world.

The Americans did offer last-minute concessions, thought to include strengthened rights of access for observers to the tribunals, but it was not enough for the Attorney-General, Peter Goldsmith. His advice to the Prime Minister has consistently been that the tribunals are unacceptable under international law - and therefore unacceptable for Britons.

'Peter Goldsmith holds very dear the issues of a fair trial,' said one government source. 'It's been down to him to say whether or not a deal could be done, and he's been uncompromising.'

Others have wryly pointed out that the Attorney-General has not applied the same standards when arguing for the detention without trial of foreign nationals in Britain's 'Guantanamo' for terrorist suspects in Belmarsh jail in London.

From the start, the release has been a twin-track process: on the one side, the legal track led by the quiet, unassuming Goldsmith - who had clocked up five trips to Washington for talks on the Guantanamo detainees, before Air Force One touched down in the UK last November - and the political track led by the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, attempting to convince the White House that the continuing wrangle over the detainees is damaging the special relationship and causing domestic ill feeling.

The fact that the future of only five of the detainees, rather than nine, is certain suggests it is the political track that now has the upper hand. Crucially for Goldsmith, the issue of their innocence or guilt is irrelevant, since if the trials were unfair they would be inappropriate for anyone regardless of whether they are dangerous. But for the White House - which insists the four remaining in Guantanamo are a security risk - and for the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, who will be held responsible if any detainees are released and commit terrorist offences, it is everything.

What has changed in the last month - after several further 'near misses' - has been the political acceptance, on both sides of the Atlantic, that all nine cases were never going to be resolved simultaneously. Some observers suggest the turmoil over the Hutton inquiry - which showed the White House how much pain had been inflicted on Blair domestically by his support for the Iraq war - may have helped to convince the Americans to be more accommodating.

But in the end Downing Street settled for having five detainees home, rather than none, 'to make some headway' - although privately senior figures accept it has now become harder to negotiate over the remaining quartet.

'We had been trying to get all nine, as that was the Attorney-General's advice. The Americans were very clear there were four of them that they didn't want to come back,' said one senior Whitehall source.

Talks are likely to centre now not on the repatriation of four, but on further changes to the tribunal process, which could make it possible for them to stand trial in the US. The only crumb of comfort is the understanding, extracted by Goldsmith, that the remaining four will not face the death penalty.

Both the Foreign Office and the Home Office insist there is no link between the draconian proposals for new terrorism courts, which would convict suspects on a lower standard of evidence and without juries, first trailed by Blunkett earlier this month - which could theoretically provide a venue for trying suspects like the remaining four detainees - and the Americans' change of heart. But just as the Government's willingness to put sky marshals on flights to America in defiance of British pilots' wishes before Christmas sent soothing signals, it will be seen in Washington as a symbol that Britain remains serious about dealing with global terrorism.

'This stuff is not and never was meant to be specific [to any one person] but it may be a factor in the Americans saying "under these circumstances, we are a bit more relaxed" - it sends symbols,' said one Downing Street source.

But the final piece of the jigsaw could come when the five touch down on British soil - to be greeted by an anxious clamour of tabloids bidding for stories of life in the camp, as well of Tory demands that they face trial for treason. The White House, as well as Downing Street, is likely to be watching the impact on international opinion carefully.

Lawyers for the detainees are now convinced that the releases were designed to head off growing disquiet in the White House about their cases being heard in the Supreme Court in April. Two of the soon to be released Britons - Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal - were subjects of a petition to the court arguing that Camp Delta, although in Cuba, fell under American jurisdiction and under US law their detention without trial would be illegal. That only leaves an Australian, Mamdouh Habib, as the case's sole remaining active petitioner.

Stephen Watts, a lawyer for the four men, said that he would not be surprised if Habib was either released or put up to a military tribunal before the Supreme Court hearing. 'By doing this the US government can try and show the court there is a proper process going on here or that the case is no longer a live one,' Watts said.

Though it has controlled Guantanamo Bay for years, the US argues that it is sovereign Cuban soil and that it just rents the land under the terms of an agreement reached with the pre-Fidel Castro government in Havana. Castro has always refused to accept the annual US rent payments. As a result of the dispute the US base has fallen into a legal black hole which the prisoners' cases will challenge at the Supreme Court.

'All these releases and other things are designed to preserve what is essentially an American gulag in the Caribbean,' Watts said.

Legal sources, however, said that other detainees who are not currently the subject of legal action were being looked at as 'back up' if Habib was also released or put forward for a military tribunal. 'Some contingency plans have been made for this eventuality,' he said.

However, there is another case also coming before the Supreme Court that involves 12 Kuwaiti detainees. So far, sources say, no diplomatic discussions have taken place on their fate. But some movement is expected in the wake of the Britons' release and the upcoming Supreme Court date. 'It would not be surprising if, just before the court appearance, something happens,' a source close to the case said.

Thomas Wilner, a lawyer for the 12 Kuwaitis, said that he believed the fate of his clients lay in the realm of politics. 'This whole thing is a question of policy for the government and army, not a question of law,' he said. He added that he was not hopeful of securing their release.

The world of high politics seems a million miles away from Riasoth Ahmed as he sits in his lounge in Tipton, with one eye on the television waiting for news of his son, Rahul.

'He kept writing that he was all right, that he could look after himself and not to worry. But the way a father feels about his son it is painful. We saw pictures of them in shackles being carried by two men and he is just a teenage boy. That is not right.' Whatever Rahul's alleged crimes, it now seems the British Government agrees.